Cityhood Backers Make Final Push in Calabasas

Calabasas voters face some urging--and some purging--as a cityhood petition campaign comes to an end in their 30-square-mile community.

Incorporation backers said Tuesday night that they hope to persuade hundreds of voters in the Mulwood section of Calabasas to sign cityhood petitions by the time a two-month signature campaign concludes next week.

At the same time, however, they will attempt to have more than 200 members of a rural Calabasas religious cult removed from Los Angeles County’s list of registered voters, and thus reduce the number of voters needed to put the cityhood measure on the ballot.

Both moves will help cityhood leaders collect signatures of at least 25% of Calabasas’ voters and qualify for a community-wide vote next year, said Robert Hall, cityhood campaign chairman.

1,965 Signatures Needed

Hill’s group currently needs to collect 1,965 valid signatures from among the community’s 7,859 registered voters by April 25. So far, he said, the committee has gathered about 1,700 names on petitions calling for an election next November.

Hill said the group wants to finish the petitions so it can concentrate next spring on the cityhood election campaign.

Only about 450 of 2,492 registered voters from the Mulwood area have signed the petition, however, Hill said. He said the campaign got a late start in the upper-middle class neighborhood, which abuts Woodland Hills.

“They’re really the big swing for us,” he told committee members. “They would be enough to get us over the top. We need to do something to get things going up there.”

Hill said the committee will ask the county registrar’s office to delete 245 voters registered as residents of the Church Universal and Triumphant headquarters at the intersection of Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road.

Sect Moving to Montana

The cult sold the site to a Japanese university in July and announced plans to move to a remote Montana ranch. Sect members must vacate the 218-acre Calabasas site on Monday under terms of the purchase.

Deletion of the Church Universal members’ name from voting rolls would reduce by 61 the number of signatures the cityhood committee needs, Hill said. The reduction would have the added benefit of saving the committee money, as the county charges 40 cents for every name that it validates on the petitions.

The group will try to collect at least 2,500 signatures to have a cushion in case some signers of the petition are not valid voters, he said.

The petitions have been in circulation since Oct. 25. Under county rules, the committee has six months to collect the signatures.

Besides next’s week’s Mulwood blitz, incorporation backers will solicit signatures this weekend outside Calabasas’ two supermarkets and will canvass a stretch of Mulholland Highway, committee members said.